Sensory Therapy is Delicious!

So, Tyler and I are working on his therapy. This is a picture of my favorite. Can you tell what is in the bowl? Orange Jello and whipped cream. Yummy!

Orange-flavored Cheerios were not so yummy. I had to bury Cheerios in the Jello and beg Tyler to feed them to me so that he would stick his hand in the Jello. But we had fun!

We also played in a rice box. I filled a fairly large tupperware bowl with rice and buried some items, like a small bath toy, some cotton balls, and some plastic bottle tops. (Please note that I mean caps to his bottles, not something small enough for him to swallow!)

We took advantage of the great weather and played outside with the rice box. Good thing as Tyler really just wanted to throw the rice.

I cleaned up as much of it as I could. How much uncooked rice does it take to kill a bird? (I've heard they eat a lot and it swells in their stomachs and kills them. That is why people don't use rice after weddings anymore. Is this true?) We have beautiful red birds on our back deck all the time. I am very concerned about them.

Speaking of ingesting uncooked rice, Tyler ate a few pieces. He loved chewing on them, crunching them between his front teeth. Really, it is hard to believe he doesn't know how to use his tongue if he can keep a tiny rice kernel in between those tiny front teeth. How much rice do you think would be harmful to an adorable bird-killing toddler?

He ate the rice and yet made no attempt to taste the Jello or the whipped cream (even though I sampled them extensively). However, that wasn't the purpose of the exercise. We were only playing with the textures in our hands. I wasn't trying to get him to eat anything.

The tongue exercises, on the other hand, are not going well. He's supposed to chew on a carrot to learn how to use his tongue and teeth. He only wants to throw the carrot. He refuses to put it near his mouth. And if I put it in my mouth, he tries to shove it down my throat!

But he's learned two new words. (As in, he recognizes the words and comes running. He can't say them yet.) "Chocolate." And "Vitamin." He loves both.

And we ordered pizza tonight. I took some of Brian's pepperoni, dried it off and toasted it in the toaster. Tyler LOVED it. Seriously, he gobbled it up. Brian has no pepperoni on his leftover piece of pizza.

I can't believe I fed my child pieces of pepperoni, but the nutritionist suggested it. She also suggested we add a teaspoon of sugar to his food twice a day, a teaspoon of olive oil to his food three times a day, a tablespoon of dry milk powder three times a day, a tablespoon of half and half once a day, a tablespoon of polycose powder four times a day. She also gave us some suggestions to make sure he's getting enough iron and recommended we keep giving him Carnation Instant Breakfast. If we can get him to eat an extra 300 calories/day, he should gain a half a pound each month.

And now, want to see what the monster was up to while I was taking pictures of Jello? Please note where his hands and feet are in this picture. So far he's only made it up two steps, but you can tell he wants to keep climbing.